


Invisible Leaf

by greenapricot



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: lewis_challenge, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, M/M, Magical Realism, Sharing a Room, Trope Challenge, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foul weather, hostile witnesses, and a late night after a very early morning lead to Lewis and Hathaway spending the night in a B&B. Hathaway is far from keen on the idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible Leaf

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime after The Dead of Winter.
> 
> Written for the Trope/Cliché Challenge at the lewis_challenge LiveJournal community. Of the tropes I was given I chose magical themes, this didn't turn out particularly magical, but a few other tropes did sneak in there as well. 
> 
> A million thanks to Jack—without whom this story would make far less sense—for the Brit-pick, beta, and encouragement. All remaining mistakes are my own.

_Thus was your inadvertent presence_  
_invisible leaf or branch_  
_and suddenly my heart was filled with fruits and sounds_  
_You occupied the house_  
_that darkly awaited you_  
_and then you lit the lamps._  
-Epithalamium, Pablo Neruda 

_________________

  


It’s been one of those cases. One of those days. One of those weeks; day upon day of hostile witnesses and not enough sleep. It's after one in the morning on a day that started with a callout at 4:00 am; the rain is pounding down so hard the wipers hardly have any effect at all. I am driving into a black watery void. 

Hathaway has nodded off in the passenger seat. He told me to wake him if he fell asleep, that he'd drive the rest of the way when I got tired. But I was already tired—was feeling run-down and wrung-out even before the callout—and he looked dead on his feet when I arrived at the first scene twenty hours ago. He fell asleep almost immediately once we got on the road.

I suspect he's not been sleeping since the Crevecoeur case and Zelinsky before that. Not that he's said anything, not that he would, but I'm not a detective for nothing. I do wish the lad would open up to me. Or someone. But with the number of nights he spends with me down the pub or back at mine for takeaway and some telly he can’t have many friends. Though, the same could be said for me. I've not passed an evening with anyone that wasn't family or Hathaway in an age.

I decide to let him sleep, push on through the darkness. It's not until I start awake just in time to slam on the brakes and keep us from careening into a ditch that I realise how bad an idea pushing on was. 

Hathaway doesn't wake at the screech of brakes or the sudden stop. Probably for the best. He'd scold me for not waking him earlier; he will do when he does wake. 

The rain seems, impossibly, to be coming down even harder now. With the torrent illuminated by the headlights all I see is light slashes of rain against the dark through the watery film of the windscreen. The thwap, flap of the ineffective wipers is nearly drowned out by the incessant beating of rain on the roof.

There was a pub not far back. Maybe it's time to pack it in and stop for the night. We're still a good hour and a half from Oxford in the best of conditions and these conditions are far from the best. There’s no point killing ourselves on the road just to be in Oxford first thing to interview more witnesses in this case of endless witnesses and no concrete evidence. And, if the next batch is anything like those we tried to talk to today, they’ll be just as hostile. 

Hathaway wakes with a start when I shut off the car in front of the pub. The small car park is nearly full and the closest space to the door is not close at all. We'll have to make a run for the door or get soaked. Likely we’ll get soaked regardless. 

“Sir,” Hathaway says, making a valiant effort to sit up and look alert but not quite hitting the mark. “My turn to drive?”

“Nope. We're stopping here for the night. Or what's left of it anyway.”

“Oh,” Hathaway replies sounding rather unsettled.

We do get soaked on the run for the door. 

The proprietor informs us that there is only one room free, an attic twin room with a shared bathroom. Hathaway pulls me around the corner speaking in hushed, urgent tones. 

“Sir, I'm sorry, but I can't. I'll get some coffee and drive us home.”

“Don't be ridiculous. You were at the scene earlier than I was this morning and you looked done in then.” Hathaway doesn't look any less disconcerted. “There're two beds, lad. I promise the night will pass with your virtue intact.”

“Sir,” he says again, pleading this time, with a hint of panic. I’m too tired to examine why it is that spending the night in a B&B has my sergeant on the edge of panic. But I'm not driving any more tonight regardless, and neither is he if I can help it. And I can.

I don't pull rank often, I’m not in the job for rank, never much cared for the hierarchy of it, but it does occasionally have its uses. When I say, “that's an order, sergeant,” Hathaway bows his head and offers no more resistance, following behind me as I go to pay for the room. 

It's more like a large attic cupboard than a room but it does have two beds tucked into the dormers—the only spaces long enough for beds. Hathaway ducks as he enters the room and stays hunched over until he's next to the bed furthest from the door. It's the only spot under the slanted ceiling where he can stand fully upright without the top of his hair brushing the beams. He is clearly unhappy with me and even more clearly not going to let me in on why. 

I let him have the bathroom first. 

He returns grumbling. I leave him to it and bang my head on the bathroom door and then the ceiling. That would be the source of the grumbling, then. There's not one part of the tiny bathroom in which Hathaway could hope to stand up fully. I do my business as quickly as I can before I bang my head again. 

Back in the room Hathaway is sitting on the far bed, his suit jacket and tie next to him on top of the duvet. He jumps up when I enter, standing stiffly as if he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He looks terrified and I can't begin to fathom what's going on with him. He takes a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself. 

“I'm sorry to have to do this, sir,” he says. 

“Do what? I don't care which bed you take.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that. Just— If you want me to leave afterward, if you no longer want to work with me, I completely understand. I'll ask Innocent for a transfer. But please, just give me ten minutes.”

How hard did he hit his head on the bathroom ceiling? I take a step toward him. “Why on earth would I want you to transfer? James—”

“Please stay there, sir. And don't say anything until I'm finished if you can.” 

I have no idea what he's on about, but he looks so anxious, so desperate. Whatever this is has got him so twisted up in knots he thinks I won't want to work with him anymore. Again. He still doesn't know that he's the best partner I've ever had. That I'm not sure I’d want to stay in the job if he wasn't there. I suppose Laura is right and you really do need to tell people how you feel. But I can tell by the look on his face and the set of his shoulders that even if I were to blurt that out right now he wouldn’t hear me. After whatever this is I will. After he's said his piece and I've reassured him that I still want him around, because there's not a thing I can think of that would make me feel otherwise. But for now I can really do nothing but wait him out.

“Okay,” I say. 

He gives me a solemn nod and starts to remove his shirt very slowly and deliberately, as if he's trying to prolong the task. He looks anguished. He keeps his eyes downcast until he's shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and laid it atop his jacket and tie on the bed. Once he's standing there half naked in front of me I realise that this is the first time I've seen him without a shirt on, not that I should be seeing my sergeant without a shirt on the regular, but we've been playing squash on and off for months and yet I've somehow missed the shirtless part of him changing every time. 

He takes another deep breath and looks up at me. He looks impossibly sad. 

I try not to stare but there is something odd about his chest, as if I'm looking at a painting that's been smudged or an out of focus photo. He makes a series of complicated gestures with his hands and murmurs something under his breath and for a moment it feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. 

When I get my breath back Hathaway is still there, looking embarrassed on top of sad now. He shifts, rolls his shoulders, and lets out a sigh. There is something behind him, something light and shimmering and not really there at first glance, which coalesces into a solid shape, almost as if his hair has suddenly grown long. But it's not hair, is it? It becomes clearer the more I look that I'm not seeing hair at all but feathers the colour of his hair, varied from light sun-bleached blond to darker tan and light brown. 

“Wings,” I whisper without even meaning to.

“I’m sorry, sir. I truly am.” Hathaway hangs his head as if waiting for punishment even as his wings spread out to fill all the available space on his side of the room, primary feathers brushing the walls. And my first thought is not shock at the fact that my sergeant is winged but outrage that he seems to expect ridicule for having them. 

And I can't have that, him punishing himself for something he has no control over. It’s as ridiculous as the idea that he deserves punishment for the color of his hair, or his height. But he’d think himself deserving of punishment for that too if someone along the way had made him believe it. I wonder, not for the first time, if this tendency for self-flagellation was what lead him to the church or if it just flourished there.

I've only ever seen a handful of winged folk, and never quite so close at hand, but my thoughts about them have always been the same. The same as my thoughts about Hathaway now. They were beautiful. He is beautiful. 

The light is not particularly bright in this small oddly shaped room but even so I can see the variations in feather colour, flecks and subtle stripes not unlike a hawk or a falcon. Do winged people have feather colouring that follows the same sort of distinctive patterns as birds? Or are feather patterns on humans, like fingerprints, all completely unique? I realise how limited what I was taught in O-level science really is. All I really know is that the genetic anomaly is rare but not as rare as you’d think based on the very small number of winged folk who go about openly. 

People are so afraid of anything, or anyone, who is different. In my early days with the force there was constable who was winged. She was bright, more than bright; but the harassment she got from her fellow officers was relentless. In the end she transferred to Northern Ireland and hasn't unbound her wings in public since she left Newcastle. Anti-discrimination laws can’t stop bigotry, and that is what it is, pure and simple. 

Hathaway’s lack of partner, his intense privacy, suddenly make so much sense. I can’t blame my sergeant for hiding. CID is hardly the most progressive and accepting workplace. But it makes my heart ache to think of him hiding this part of himself so completely. To think that he feels he has no other choice. And maybe he doesn't in this job but it's wrong that he doesn’t and I can't help but be angry on his behalf at the injustice of it all. 

I have so many questions, but this is not the time. And I’m staring. Probably look like a right fool.

“I know they're grotesque,” Hathaway says, “but if I keep them bound for too many hours at a time I risk doing damage, and not only to the wings. Avert your eyes and I'll get rid of them as soon as I can.”

“What if I don't want you to,” I find myself saying. He looks like he can't parse the statement, his mouth half open in disbelief. “James, they're beautiful.”

“You can't really think that.”

“I can. I do.”

He is staring at me. I step toward him and before I can stop myself I've reached out to touch him. The wings are cool, solid, powerful, and Hathaway groans when my hand makes contact with his feathers. I shouldn’t be doing this. He’s my sergeant. I didn't even ask. The lack of sleep has clearly affected my impulse control. He leans into my touch and when I run my hand along the leading edge of his wing he all but moans. The sound settles in the pit of my stomach in a way that is both worrying and arousing. 

“Sir,” he breathes, and this time it sounds like an endearment. He lets out a contented sigh, his wing flexing under my hand, and sits on the bed, turning sideways so he can stretch his wings out fully without brushing the ceiling and the walls. 

It shouldn't feel so right to have my hand on my sergeant like this, to want to lean into him while he leans into me. It shouldn't feel so comfortable, but there has always been something comforting about Hathaway’s presence even when he's at his most awkward. I can feel the warmth of his bare skin through my shirt when he leans in further, his shoulder resting against my chest. More of my limited knowledge of winged folk comes back to me, that they tend to run warmer than the non-winged, especially with their wings unbound. I want to put my hands on his skin, feel how much warmer it really is. I wonder if whatever magic he used to bind his wings has other residual effects. If there is even a kernel of truth to the stories of winged folk and magical compulsion. The mostly useless seminar about policing and magic users we were all subject to last year did almost nothing to shed light on any of it.

“That was magic?” I ask. “The binding?”

Hathaway nods and then sits up straight and stretches his wings to their fullest extent before folding them down against his back. 

“Most winged folk have a bit of magic,” he says. “It's helpful with concealment if nothing else.” 

“But does it… do other things?” I ask, almost immediately wishing I’d kept my mouth shut when his wings twitch in annoyance.

“You mean have I put a spell on you?”

“I suppose.”

“A magic user could do that in theory,” his tone is hard now, his voice quiet. “But no, I would never do that to you even if I could.”

I look at him then, really take him in. The look on his face, the tone of his voice, the way, despite his clear agitation, he's still leaning into the hand I haven't moved from his feathers. This isn't just about the wings. 

“You wouldn't would you?” I say. “But you’d want to.” 

He stiffens, pulls away from me completely, and I find I miss the contact. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. And he looks as wretched as he did before he unbound his wings. “If there was any way I could undo the last thirty minutes, believe me, I would.”

“Then I'm glad there isn't.”

“Good for you,” he says, tone cutting. He stands, wings quivering in agitation, and tries to pace the room but doesn't get far with the low ceiling. He sits down on the bed again looking defeated. “I'd rather keep things the way they were, and keep my job, keep my dignity.”

“You can,” I say, sitting next to him. 

“I don't see how, sir.”

“Simple. We get some sleep, we drive back to Oxford in the morning and we go to work just like always.”

“And somehow ignore this,” he twitches his wings behind him angrily. “Now that you know how can you possibly still want to work with me? To see me even?”

“Because it doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with us working together.”

“Of course it matters. This changes everything. I've lied to you. Again,” he shakes his head looking down at his hands in his lap. “What can I possibly do to regain your trust?”

“Nothing,” I say. He looks up at me, shocked. “You never lost it, lad. You're an awkward, irritating sod at times but you're my awkward, irritating sod and I trust you with my life.” 

He stills, taking in this new piece of evidence, shakes his head again. 

“It's unreasonable for me to expect anyone to make accommodations for me. I can’t ask that of you.”

“Don’t be daft, man. Working with you isn’t an accommodation.” I try to look him in the eye but he’s determinedly looking out the near window into the blackness of the night. “That's not all though, is it? You called them grotesque.”

“It's the truth, sir.” 

He really believes that, believes that he is grotesque, flawed; so undesirable he should be hidden. I want to get my hands on the person, the people surely, for it to be this bad, who convinced him this was the truth. I think back to Crevecoeur, Hathaway shaking Mortmaigne’s hand, the stiffness of his posture. Every interaction he had with every person in that place. He was a child there, they must have known. It seems Mortmaigne did get to him, just not the way I’d feared.

“It's really not.” I say. 

“No, it's okay. I've come to terms with what I am but that doesn't mean I want to confront anyone else with it. Unless I have no other choice. I am truly sorry that I didn't have a choice tonight.” He sighs, shaking his head, drums his fingers on his thigh in a way I know means he’s itching for a smoke. “I tried to unbind in the bathroom but there just wasn’t enough space. I wish—” He sighs. “Standard bindings can be left on for days. This one was an experiment, a new technique with the potential to be less painful and put less pressure on the latissimus dorsi and subscapularis. It's never a good idea to leave a new binding on for more than twenty hours the first few times though. Less than twelve is preferable, and this is only my second casting.” He shakes his head again, castigating himself. “I should have known better than to try it on a work day, especially with the case we've got on. I promise you it won't happen again.”

He talks about binding techniques the same way he talks about obscure religious texts. I can picture him pouring over books and websites, researching; that look he gets when he finds some piece that pulls everything together. 

“No,” I say. “Promise me it will happen again. You said the other bindings hurt.”

He shrugs, and elegant motion with wings and shoulders, “It’s the winged folk’s lot.”

“Well it shouldn’t be.”

“How can— How can you be so kind. After everything.”

“I’m not ‘being kind’, lad. I said it before; it doesn’t matter, not to me. And it shouldn’t to anyone else either. You’re still my sergeant, my partner.”

“But now I'll be asking you to lie for me. You know how the DCs get, the rumours. It's bad enough they think I'm a posh, gay, ex-priest. But this.” 

“You’ve been working all these years without anyone knowing. I don’t see why that needs to change, if that’s what you really want.” He looks at me again and his gaze is more open than I’ve ever seen it. My first instinct is to look away, to hide my own feelings, but he’s not hiding from me so I hold his gaze. 

“You’re really not bothered by my—” he twitches his wings, the right one brushing against my shoulder. He can’t seem to bring himself to say the word. And I can see that I'm going to have to do something about that. 

“The wings,” I say, and he flinches a bit as I say it. “No, I’m not bothered. I said I’m not. Of course I’m not. You’ve had wings the whole time I’ve known you. Me knowing about them now doesn’t change who you are or how I feel about you. Of course it doesn’t.” 

He swallows and looks away, eyes wet. “Of course,” he says shaking his head. “No one has ever… It’s always been… Thank you, sir,” the last words come out choked. He bows his head again, shoulders and wings shaking ever so slightly. He must be truly exhausted to be crying in front of me. 

I put a hand on his shoulder then run my palm down across the wings folded against his back. He leans into the touch and then leans into me, relaxes against me. I don’t know how long we sit like that, my arm around him, his head on my shoulder, just breathing together. I doze off at some point, lulled by the sound of the rain—comforting now that I’m not driving in it—and the warmth of my sergeant beside me. I wake to him whispering, “thank you, thank you, thank you,” like a prayer.

“Ah, lad,” I say, “There’s nothing to thank me for.” 

“And that’s why you’re so remarkable,” he says his voice muffled by my shoulder.

“Give over.”

“No, you—” he sits up, looks me in the eye. “You are a wonder, sir.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, the open affection in his voice, on his face, so I slide my hand down across his back, across his wings, and give his bare left arm a squeeze, pulling him closer—though there was no real space between us to begin with. He shifts his wings, lifting them up over my arm and settling them down again around us both. His wings encircle me, my arm across his back, soft feathers and his skin so warm against my forearm where my sleeve is rolled up. It is a startlingly intimate position and yet I am nothing but comfortable. 

He speaks again a minute later. “So there's this,” he twitches his wings, “but you're my superior officer… and I'm… this isn’t…”

I wait for him to finish but no end to the sentence is forthcoming. 

“As far as I'm concerned,” I say. “If you’d rather I not mention anything that's happened in this room after we leave I won't. We’ll just carry on as usual.”

Another twitch of his wings. “And you'd still want me as your sergeant?”

“You and nobody else.”

He lays his head back on my shoulder and I can almost hear the wheels churning in that big brain of his. 

“No matter what happens tonight you won't mention it again if that's what I want? Nothing will change?” He’s talking about something else now, not what has happened but something that might. I feel a fluttering in my stomach to match the flutter of feathers as his wings stir against me.

“Yes,” I say. 

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “You were right. I would.” 

He's carrying on from some part of the conversation I'm not quite up to speed on. “Would what?”

“I would want to put a spell on you. So that you would want me to do this.” And then my sergeant leans in and presses his lips to mine. It is a kiss in the most chaste sense of the word. His lips are dry and surprisingly soft, and more surprisingly, not at all unwelcome. Or maybe not so surprising. There was a lad once who looked not unlike Hathaway, height, and coloring, and wings. But I don't know how to tell Hathaway that or if it would even be a good idea. Instead I lean toward him as he's pulling away and he stops his retreat, presses his lips to mine again. 

This time the kiss is nothing like chaste and he leans into me until he’s almost in my lap; one hand on my face, the other on the back of my neck pulling me to him, his wings surrounding me. I haven’t been kissed like this in… I’m not sure I’ve ever been kissed quite like this, and certainly not by a bloke.

While my hands explore his naked back his start working on the buttons of my shirt, pushing it down over my shoulders while his tongue explores my mouth. And I am lost in it, in him. Minutes pass, or hours, and that sleep I so desperately needed when we stopped here is the furthest thing from my mind. 

“Sir,” he breathes when we finally pull apart. 

“Think you could maybe call me Robbie,” I say, “under the circumstances.”

He sits back a bit, looks at me, whispers, “Robbie,” and smiles. Then his look turns thoughtful and the smile changes to a grin. “Are you still planning to keep your promise?” he asks.

“I believe I did. Let you say your piece before I told you you were wrong.”

“Not that promise,” he says, and his tone turns downright seductive. “You promised the night would pass with my virtue intact.”

Oh.

“I suppose not, then,” I say and he leans in to kiss me again.

  



End file.
